waxing poetic

today was a strange day. i was in a strange mood.

i went to go eat breakfast out for a change because it had finally stopped raining...so i went in and ordered, in chinese, what i wanted to eat. the girl behind the counter's jaw literally dropped onto the counter: (in chinese) "can you speak chinese?" "yes, a little bit," i replied. she started jumping and clapping, "you can understand! hey, come listen to this foreign girl! she can understand what i am saying in chinese!"

there are times when i am so shocked (and admittedly very proud) of listening to myself say anything, even just hello, in chinese that i also want to jump and clap and run around speaking to everyone i can find. but...there are days, like today, when i really don't feel like being a museum exhibit and i hate when people gather round me to hear me say "can i have some rice and tea, please" in chinese. i almost started to cry because i was so annoyed, and because i felt like such an idiot, but i just ate my breakfast and tried to forget it.

on the way home, a woman stopped me to ask me where i was from. this is not an event that is out of the ordinary; i live in a town where there aren't many foreigners, so when people see me, they often try to talk to me. i had been sulking to myself in english for so long that i almost couldn't respond to her; finally when i did say something, it came out wrong, and then i had to correct myself...and then she kept asking really involved questions like "why do you like taiwan? what's the best about it? do you miss your country?" etc. these questions are hard enough to answer in english! you know the phrase about being "lost in translation?" that's definitely how i feel. my chinese isn't good enough to be able to discuss abstract situations or ideas, so these types of conversations are really difficult. i didn't want to be rude, because everyone is so nice to me and they have good intentions when they strike up a conversation...but i could almost literally feel my brain explode and start oozing out my ears by the end of that conversation. i don't even know what i said to that poor woman, but she smiled, told me to enjoy the rest of my time on the island, and that she had never seen green eyes before.